Only one way out

Saturday

Michelle Dee of Eugene is an escape artist, but not in the sense of Houdini, that legendary skilled illusionist and magician who — poof — made entertainment out of a disappearing act.

Dee creates a story with one solution built upon a series of puzzles and clues in a themed room, and then shuts people inside to solve their way out.

She combs antiques stores for mysterious props: a suitcase; a clown suit; an old typewriter. Anything goes, really, as she builds her rooms to confound, to challenge, to tell a tale.

“I see mystery everywhere,” Dee admits with a giggle.

Simple things, such as plastic ducks, may seem silly but maybe, just maybe, they’re not.

In creating an alternative world at her Dare Escape & Adventure Rooms, in which participants enter another dimension for an hour or so, Dee not only offers a place to escape from everyday worries and trials, she triggers the desire to break free. Inside, say, her Crazy Carnival Midway, the room suddenly feels really small. And inside the Explorer Room, one might travel around the world.

It’s thrilling, really, to work as a group with no way out, except for the solution. Nerves kick in, too, what with that tiny voice at the back of the head, wondering, How will I get out of here?

Thank goodness for helpful hints, which Dee always is willing to provide should someone inside the room ring a bell.

“A lot of people haven’t known what an escape room is,” Dee says, adding with a laugh, “I get very strange questions as to what goes on in here.”

No wonder. Drive up to the business on West Eleventh Avenue, and the curtains are drawn, the door is locked. No clues here, until you’ve made an appointment to escape.

Dee and her daughter, Ivy, did just that more than a year ago. While visiting Colorado they took part in an escape room for the first time and, as Dee recalls, “fell in love. After that, everything I looked at became a puzzle to me ... and I decided I needed to open one. This needs to happen. This is my calling.”

A place for interaction

Over at Trapdoor Escape Rooms, also in Eugene but on Charnelton Street, owners Jamie Carwile and Gabe Billings, who have known each other for about 20 years, have created an escape room built around the theme of being “trapped” inside the chamber of a deceased fortune teller.

Carwile and Billings provide guests with the story line and some necessary clues to get them started, and then the door is shut in dramatic fashion with the click of a lock.

The group has an hour to solve their escape.

“We’re generous with the clues,” Billings adds reassuringly.

Like Dee, Billings and Carwile have a penchant for creating puzzles. They always had known that they wanted to open a business together, “but nothing really stuck until I heard about escape rooms and I tossed it out there,” Billings says.

They started building their puzzles back in January and moved into their space in June, opening in August.

“Escape rooms are fairly new,” Billings explains. “I think they’ve been around about 10 years.” Someone was looking at online escape games and decided to create a physical and functioning version in real time, he goes on to say. “I think they started over in Asia and took off, and then moved through Europe.” Here in the States, maybe they’ve been around for five years or so, Billings posits.

Dee, whose rooms also opened in August, says “I know there is a huge trend with people playing video games, which is great fun. You can go so many places inside of a video game, but I think now taking it to the next level, really making it a real life adventure ...” that’s what escape rooms provide, she says.

Ideally, Billings and Carwile say, a group is no more than eight people for the optimum experience, with “sixish sort of the sweet spot.” Could one person tackle the room? “We think the room is virtually impossible for a single person to do,” Carwile adds. “So, two to eight people is our goal in group size.”

Children, too, are welcome; but Carwile, whose daughter was 11 when she first went through the room, cautions that the puzzles are challenging enough to be above the heads of younger kids, so “younger than 9 or 10 will just get disinterested; the puzzles require a level of intelligence.”

Billings adds, “We’ve had a couple of groups with 15- to 16-year-olds and they really seemed to have a blast.”

Similarly, Dee recommends two to six people, 14 years and older, for her set-ups so that everyone can interact with enough room and smarts to enjoy the experience.

Afterwards, the couple both agreed that the experience had been more than satisfying.

“It was really exciting,” Coburn-Roeske said. “I felt like we were in there a whole lot longer than we were. There was some physical activity, but mostly it was brain challenges and just trying to figure out where to go next to find your next clue.”

Bill Roeske added, “What I really liked best ... is how you get — well, we’re married — two other people we did not know; and after you start figuring out one thing together, it’s like you’ve known each other forever, and you start working together. So I could see it being a really great team-building exercise.”

“I broke out into a sweat,” Coburn-Roeske admitted. “I wasn’t really doing anything super active, but I was just having fun.”

Escapees aren’t the only ones who’ve had a memorable time, joking together and, yes, feeling as if they’ll be friends for life.

“I smile all the time because I have so much fun,” Dee admits. “Whenever I shut the door behind a group of people — dramatic door shut — you have a mission to accomplish; and every time I shut that door, I giggle, I grin as I run to the monitor ... it’s so fun to watch them.”

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